Behind Already

Here it is January, a time for new beginnings, a clean slate, fresh start… you catch my drift.  Here I am already wayyyyyy behind on posting.  I’ve been intending to post over the last few weeks, but wasn’t able to organize my thoughts.  I am proceeding anyway.

• Is there a better smell than homemade whole wheat bread cooking?   Is there a better sight than 5 beautiful loaves (tonight’s batch finally managed to have fairly consistent loaf sizes, yippee!) sitting on cooling racks on the kitchen counter?  Is there any better taste than a piece of light whole wheat goodness?  Hmmmmn.  I think not.
• I was asked to sing at our Christmas Relief Society meeting.  I was terrified.  I don’t really sing solos publicly anymore.  I agreed and then started to panic.  I found a song and started practicing constantly.  My family was really tired of my song, but they didn’t say that.  After practicing so much I started to relax a little, but really needed help.  I called my friend and neighbor who has more credentials than should be legal.  She came and gave me a free voice lesson and helped me sooooo much.  Mostly, I felt so much more confident.  I sang the song in a family room crammed full of 40 women right in front of me.  Terrifying, but I did it.  And, I loved it.  Music is amazing.  After that, I remembered how much I love singing and how much I had to learn and that I didn’t ever want to get to the point I can’t do it anymore because I quit using it.  I had my first official voice lesson (first in 20 years) today and loved it.  It feels great to develop and appreciate a talent.
• Along those same lines, I think I want to write more.  I feel so grateful for blogs, it’s a wonderful way to journal, and to open up or share experiences with friends and family, and is the perfect outlet when i  just feel like writing.   I have dreams of writing a book, but I have no idea what kind of book I’d write.  I always thought I would do children’s books, but I have had to face the fact that I’m just not a very creative writer.  I need to find my niche.
• I am trying to close in on some resolutions.  It’s honestly a bit daunting, because there’s a lot to do and I’m trying not to overwhelm myself, so I’m trying to really zero in on some simple, realistic goals to start with.  I think I’m almost ready to commit to some.  I also like the concept of having a theme word for the year.  One word that kind of says it all.  My contenders are “order” and “finish”.  I like “order” because it will remind me to physically put things in order, like the laundry room, aka “pit of despair”.  I like that it goes deeper than that though too, that it will help me remember to put first things first, that sometimes the right order is to let the housework go and attend to children or nourish myself spiritually etc.  I tend to get things backwards a lot and would love to have every kind of order in my life.   “Finish” would be to remind me to follow through on all my scattered ideas and tasks.  I can’t tell you how often I have an impulse to do something nice for someone and then don’t follow through.  Or, how many times I start to clean something or do some kind of project and then don’t ever complete it.  Maybe I should just have two words this year.  Hmmm
• I think next time I’ll organize my thoughts before I post.